Dinosaurs in Literature, Art & History-- Page 5

Dinosaur fossils were first discovered in Thailand in 1976, quite by accident when geologists from the Department of Mineral Resources were surveying land for uranium in the Phu Wiang district of Khon Kaen province.

One of the survey team, Khun Sutham Yaemniyom, unearthed a large bone which turned out to be from a Sauropod dinosaur, a long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged species. Later, the Northeastern Geological Survey Team discovered more dinosaur fossils in Chaiyaphum and Udon Thanee provinces.

What exactly are dinosaur fossils? - Fossils are plant and animal remains that have been preserved beneath the surface of the earth. They are most commonly found near rivers, lakes and the coast but may be found in deserts that, millions of years ago may have been a lake or even a coastline!

The name dinosaur was coined by a famous English scholar, Professor Richard Owen, in 1841. He invented the name from the Greek words 'Deinos' meaning terribly frightening, and 'Sauros' meaning a reptile or reptilian.

Phu Wiang Forest was declared the 71st national park in 1991 and covers an area of about 325 square kilometres. It is located approximately 85 kilometres northwest of Khon Kaen city and is a great source of dinosaur fossils, especially in the northwest section of the park....www.wikipedia.com - Thai Travel Site

On the top left is is an ancient Thai object (incense burner or candle holder) of art from the book Arts of Asia. Curiously enough, it looks like a stylized version of a sauropod, a type of dinosaur that was actually found in Thailand. Those are birds perched on the back of the dino.

On the top right is a photo of the statue of a giant sauropod dinosaur in Phu Wiang Park in Thailand --near where the bones of a sauropod were found in 1976.

"Dinosaurs from Anglo-Saxon and other Records

Excerpts from Bill Cooper's book; After the Flood--Online version. Note the accurate descriptions from ancient eyewitnesses of dragon features which we can associate with features of known dinosaur types. Also, many of the tales that are excepted here are not "fantastic" descriptions of dinosaurs, but matter-of-fact point by point recitations of the events:

"Dinosaurs from Anglo-Saxon and other Records......
I have spoken on the subject of the Table of Nations and the early post-Flood history of Europe, in Germany, Belgium and at many places now in England, and what surprised me at first was how, during question time, the subject turns so quickly to that of dinosaurs. Do they appear in the early chronicles? Do descriptions of them exist? And so on.

So here I have set out as many examples of the mention of dinosaurs in the early records as I could immediately find, although there are doubtless many other instances to be noticed. Some of the examples mentioned here come from the very records that we have just been considering concerning the descent of the nations.

The progression is only logical, for if the earth is as young as our forebears thought and as the creation model of origins predicts, then evidence will be found which tells us that, in the recent past, dinosaurs and man have co-existed.

There is, in fact, good evidence to suggest that they still co-exist, and this is directly contrary to the evolutionary model which teaches that dinosaurs lived millions of years before man came along, and that no man therefore can ever have seen a living dinosaur.

And to test that assertion, we will now examine the issue by considering the written evidence that has survived from the records of various ancient peoples that describe, sometimes in the most graphic detail, human encounters with living giant reptiles that we would call dinosaurs. And as we shall see, some of those records are not so ancient.

There are, of course, the famous descriptions of two such monsters from the Old Testament, Behemoth and Leviathan (Job 40:15-41:34), Behemoth being a giant vegetarian that lived on the fens, and Leviathan a somewhat more terrifying armour plated amphibian whom only children and the most foolhardy would want as a pet.

The Egyptians knew Behemoth by the name p'ih.mw, which is the same name, of course. Leviathan was similarly known as Lotan to the men of Ugarit.

Babylonian and Sumerian literature has preserved details of similar creatures, as has the written and unwritten folklore of peoples around the world. But perhaps the most remarkable descriptions of living dinosaurs are those that the Saxon and Celtic peoples of Europe have passed down to us.

The early Britons, from whom the modern Welsh are descended, provide us with our earliest surviving European accounts of reptilian monsters, one of whom killed and devoured king Morvidus (Morydd) in ca 336 BC.

We are told in the account translated for us by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that the monster 'gulped down the body of Morvidus as a big fish swallows a little one.' Geoffrey described the animal as a Belua.

Peredur, not the ancient king of that name (306-296 BC), but a much later son of Earl Efrawg, had better luck than Morvidus, actually managing to slay his monster, an addanc (pr. athanc: var. afanc), at a place called Llyn Llion in Wales. At other Welsh locations the addanc is further spoken of along with another reptilian species known as the carrog.

The addanc survived until comparatively recent times at such places as Bedd-yr-Afanc near Brynberian, at Llyn-yr-Afanc above Bettws-y-Coed on the River Conwy (the killing of this monster was described in the year 1693), and Llyn Barfog.

A carrog is commemorated at Carrog near Corwen, and at Dol-y-Carrog in the Vale of Conwy.

Moreover, 'dinosaurs', in the form of flying reptiles, were a feature of Welsh life until surprisingly recent times. As late as the beginning of the present century, elderly folk at Penllin in Glamorgan used to tell of a colony of winged serpents that lived in the woods around Penllin Castle.

As Marie Trevelyan tells us: 'The woods around Penllin Castle, Glamorgan, had the reputation of being frequented by winged serpents, and these were the terror of old and young alike. An aged inhabitant of Penllyne, who died a few years ago, said that in his boyhood the winged serpents were described as very beautiful.

They were coiled when in repose, and "looked as if they were covered with jewels of all sorts. Some of them had crests sparkling with all the colours of the rainbow". When disturbed they glided swiftly, J 'sparkling all over', to their hiding places. When angry, they "flew over people's heads, with outspread wings, bright, and sometimes with eyes too, like the feathers in a peacock's tail".

He said it was "no old story invented to' frighten children", but a real fact. His father and uncle had killed some of them, for they were as bad as foxes for poultry. The old man attributed the extinction of the winged serpents to the fact that they were "terrors in the farmyards and coverts".

This account is intriguing in many respects, not the least being the fact that it is not a typical account of dragons. The creatures concerned were not solitary and monstrous beasts, but small creatures that lived in colonies.

Not at all like the larger species of winged reptile that used to nest upon an ancient burial-mound, or tumulus, at Trellech-a'r-Betws in the county of Dyfed, for example.

But whilst we are in Wales, it is worth noting that at Llanbardan-y-Garrag (is Garrag a corruption of carrog?), the church contains a carving of a local giant reptile whose features include large paddle-like flippers, a long neck and a small head.

Glaslyn, in Snowdon, is a lake where an afanc was sighted as recently as the 1930s.

On this occasion two climbers on the side of a mountain looked down onto the surface of Glaslyn and they saw the creature, which they described as having a long grey body, rise from the depths of the lake to the surface, raise its head and then submerge again.

One could multiply such reports by the hundred. In England and Scotland, again until comparatively recent times, other reptilian monsters were sighted and spoken of in many places.

The table at the end of this chapter lists eighty-one locations in the British Isles alone in which dinosaur activity has been reported (there are, in fact, nearly 200 such places in Britain), but perhaps the most relevant aspect of this as far as our present study is concerned is the fact that some of these sightings and subsequent encounters with living dinosaurs can be dated to the comparatively recent past.

The giant reptile at Bures in Suffolk, for example, is known to us from a chronicle of 1405: 'Close to the town of Bures, near Sudbury, there has lately appeared, to the great hurt of the countryside, a dragon, vast in body, with a crested head, teeth like a saw, and a tail extending to an enormous length.

Having slaughtered the shepherd of a flock, it devoured many sheep.' After an unsuccessful attempt by local archers to kill the beast, due to its impenetrable hide,

'...in order to destroy him, all the country people around were summoned. But when the dragon saw that he was again to be assailed with arrows, he fled into a marsh or mere and there hid himself among the long reeds, and was no more seen.'

Later in the 15th century, according to a contemporary chronicle that still survives in Canterbury Cathedral's library, the following incident was reported. On the afternoon of Friday, 26th September, 1449, two giant reptiles were seen fighting on the banks of the River Stour (near the village of Little Cornard) which marked the English county borders of Suffolk and Essex. One was black, and the other 'reddish and spotted'.

After an hour-long struggle that took place 'to the admiration of many [of the locals] beholding them', the black monster yielded and returned to its lair, the scene of the conflict being known ever since as Sharpfight Meadow (now Shalford Meadow).

As late as August, 1614, the following sober account was given of a strange reptile that was encountered in St Leonard's Forest in Sussex.

The sighting was near a village that was known as Dragon's Green long before this report was published:

'This serpent (or dragon as some call it) is reputed to be nine feete, or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the form of an axletree of a cart: a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both endes.

The former part, which he shootes forth as a necke, is supposed to be an elle [3 ft 9 ins or 1 l4 cms] long; with a white ring, as it were, of scales about it.

The scales along his back seem to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his belie, appeareth to be red... it is likewise discovered to have large feete, but the eye may there be deceived, for some suppose that serpents have no feete ...

[The dragon] rides away (as we call it) as fast as a man can run.

His food [rabbits] is thought to be; for the most part, in a conie-warren, which he much frequents ...There are likewise upon either side of him discovered two great bunches so big as a large foote-ball, and (as some thinke) will in time grow to wings, but God, I hope, will (to defend the poor people in the neighbourhood) that he shall be destroyed before he grows to fledge.'

This dragon was seen in various places within a circuit of three or four miles, and the pamphlet named some of the still-living witnesses who had seen him.

These included John Steele, Christopher Holder and a certain 'widow woman dwelling neare Faygate'. Another witness was 'the carrier of Horsham, who lieth at the White Horse [inn] in Southwark'.

One of the locals set his two mastiffs onto the monster, and apart from losing his dogs he was fortunate to escape alive from the encounter, for the dragon was already credited with the deaths of a man and woman at whom it had spat and who consequently had been killed by its venom. When approached unwittingly, our pamphleteer tells us, the monster was...

'...of countenance very proud and at the sight or hearing of men or cattel will raise his neck upright and seem to listen and looke about, with great arrogancy.' an eyewitness account of typically reptilian behaviour.

Again, as late as 27th and 28th May 1669, a large reptilian animal was sighted many times, as was reported in the pamphlet: A True Relation of a Monstrous Serpent seen at Henham (Essex) on the Mount in Saffron Waldon.

In 1867 was seen, for the last time, the monster that lived in the woods around Fittleworth in Sussex. It would run up to people hissing and spitting if they happened to stumble across it unawares, although it never harmed anyone.

Several such cases could be cited, but suffice it to say that too many incidents like these are reported down through the centuries and from all sorts of locations for us to say that they are all fairy-tales.

For example, Scotland's famous Loch Ness Monster is too often thought to be a recent product of the local Tourist Board's efforts to bring in some trade, yet Loch Ness is by no means the only Scottish loch where monsters have been reported. Loch Lomond, Loch Awe, Loch Rannoch and the privately owned Loch Morar (over 1000 ft deep) also have records of monster activity in recent years.

Indeed, there have been over forty sightings at Loch Morar alone since the end of the last war, and over a thousand from Loch Ness in the same period.

However, as far as Loch Ness itself is concerned, few realise that monstrous reptiles, no doubt the same species, have been sighted in and around the loch since the so-called Dark Ages, the most notable instance being that which is described in Adamnan's famous 6th century Life of St Columba.